I want to thank the member from Thornhill for her leadership in advocating for us to go back to basics in Ontario schools.

After we landed deals with every teacher union in Ontario, a historic achievement that’s providing stability for children, we announced a commitment to more than double the funding to build modern schools, after the former Liberals closed 600 in this province—a commitment to more than double the funding, a 136% increase in funding as we approved, this year alone, over 27,000 student spaces, 1,700 additional child care spaces in schools. When you put it all together, under our government’s leadership, 100,000 spaces are being built as we speak.

We’re building. We are investing and delivering a more highly qualified education system that goes back to the basics in Ontario.

Speaker, I’m proud to report that in this round, because of the changes we implemented in the Better Schools and Student Outcomes Act, 81% of new builds in this province are using standardized designs as a consequence of our mission, which is to speed up construction, to approve shovel-ready projects in our smallest towns and our biggest cities, as we build schools and highways and homes and the infrastructure necessary to ensure we build this province.

After the Liberals increased child care costs 500%, pricing so many families out of the job market, and mothers often had to stay home instead of going to work because of the economic disincentives of unaffordable child care, we delivered a plan, in partnership with all levels of government, that has reduced fees by 50%, saving $8,000 to $12,000 per child.

The member speaks about access for constituents who would seek child care, and yet the member’s party and the Liberals recommended to the government that we remove 30% of the market by denying for-profit child care. We’re talking about tens of thousands of spaces for families in Toronto that would have been reduced and cut and eliminated if we did it the way the NDP and Liberals recommended.

We are standing up for choice, we’re respecting parents, and we’re ensuring all families benefit from affordability in this province.

The record must be clear: Liberals and New Democrats stood in this House encouraging—in fact, demanding—that the government sign a deal that would have left 70,000 spaces and families behind because of your ideological conviction to oppose small business women who own for-profit child care. That’s the choice. That’s what those three parents you mentioned should know—that you would have made it worse, increased wait-lists, decreased access, increased costs.

We stood up to this Prime Minister for a better deal. We will always stand up for all families, all children, in all regions of this province.